Sunday, April 25, 2010

laughter

In our empty kitchenshe held me,shaking with overlapping sobs.And I held back – held on for dear life,stunned into an impervious state.It was a crying so surreal;so severe, that it soundedlike wails of laughterbouncing off the walls of the roomand slapping my face likean unyielding torrent of anguish.The ambiguous streak that dividesthe two forms of hystericsis shockingly obscure.I had to check her face – make sure the tears were real,make sure the maternal bodyupon my framewas racked with grief,not laughter;seizing with pain,not laughter.It was a sobbing so intenseit tricked me into laughing.I couldn’t stop.An uninvited grin spit out the anomalyin that drenched kitchen,but she mistook my heaves for empathizing sobs.And as I stood letting her tearssoak my hair and neck with guilt,I marked the moment where the weight of those yearsfinally took its tolland made me laugh asmy mother cried with the sadnessof an entire dying world.

Oh this just broke my heart! I cannot help but relate to the grief-wracked mother. I think a mother will always try to hold that sort of pain away from her children, because, well, mothers are supposed to be the strong ones.

But maybe it's really because she worries that her sobs would be met with laughter, internal or expressed, as in "oh, get a grip." I hope the mother in your poem really did think the child was crying with empathy, because the alternative is too painful to consider.

Patti - Yes, it's indeed supposed to be heartbreaking...I relate more to the child having to become an adult prematurely because of the situation...a very sad thing. The child is not laughing AT the mother, but they are both kind of in hysterics.

Brian - Thanks!!

SheWrites & Yodood - Yeah, I think we can all relate to the balance of that strange fine line that we have to find in order to act "appropriately" in awkward situations.

"As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What [she] craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath."